Monthly Archives: October 2011

Article reads: Heaven forfend that a distinguished professor from Berkeley University should actually have been caught out telling a lie direct. No, clearly what has happened here is that Professor Muller has made the kind of mistake any self-respecting climate scientist could make: gone to press with some extravagant claims without having a smidgen of evidence to support them.

Article reads: Against all the odds, Andrea Rossi’s E-Cat cold fusion power plant passed its biggest test yesterday, producing an average of 470 kilowatts for more than five hours. (A technical glitch prevented it from achieving a megawatt as originally planned). The demonstration was monitored closely by engineers from Rossi’s mysterious US customer, which was evidently satisfied and paid up.

Article reads: The patient, a man named John Moore, was never told that his discarded body parts could be used in other ways. He sued his doctor and the University of California, where the procedure took place, for lying to him about his tissue — and because he did not want to be the subject of a patent. The case went all the way to the California Supreme Court, where Moore lost. In the decision, the court noted that Moore had no right to any share of the profits obtained from anything developed from his discarded body parts.

Opinion reads: How about people who feel that even behind something as scientifically well mapped-out as evolution – particularly something like that, perhaps – there has to be something else? A creator? “Who made it happen?

Article reads: An Ohio judge has ruled against a public school science teacher who was fired for allegedly pushing his religious beliefs on his students, and for keeping a Bible on his desk. The Rutherford Institute, the legal advocacy group representing him in an appeal of the termination, insisted that the charge has more to do with the teacher’s efforts to get students to think critically about the issue of evolution.

Article reads: Only a very narrow range of Higgs targets are now left – and some scientists are beginning to get twitchy, including Murray. “In 1993, I got a job by telling people that I wanted to find the Higgs,” he says. “It is only in the last month that I have started to think that it might not exist after all.”

Opinion reads: For most of us, spiritual evolution does not occur simply as a result of one flash of insight or revelation. On the contrary, it usually requires inspired intention and consistent, diligent effort. And the way this is achieved is through the greatest gift that evolution has given us: the power of choice.

Article reads: Max Planck first discovered quantum theory more than a century ago because of odd observations that could be explained in no other way. That led to the laser and the semiconductor and all the technological revolutions they have seeded. Quantum biology is at that early stage of inexplicable observations. Turin for one believes something big is emerging. “I can’t help thinking we are seeing just a small part of a far, far bigger iceberg,” he says.

Article reads: In clinical trials, new drugs are often compared to older treatments, but sometimes they’re also compared to placebos—inert treatments that ought to have no effect. Except that’s not what happens. The placebo effect can actually be pretty strong, and even more strangely, placebos can work even when the patient knows they’re being given one.